A few months ago, we blogged about an urban marketing campaign by Sony Playstation that was met with a very hostile response from the street artist community. The lesson learned from that experience might be summed up as “don’t try to be something that you are not”.
It would appear that Adidas’ recent street campaign took this lesson to heart and got it right. Rather than imposing themselves and trying to assimilate with the urban culture, Adidas instead provided the culture with exactly what it is always searching for: a blank canvas. Graffiti artists naturally responded by tagging the large empty space of the billboards whereupon Adidas then returned and posted up a new billboard that used the tagging as a design element on their shoes. The end result becomes a collaboration that leaves both sides shaking their heads at the sheer cleverness of the exchange. Brilliant. (Via Frederik Samuel)
Posted by Kevin Broome
Tags: Advertising, Inspiration, Marketing, Pop Culture
Lingus (March 28th, 2006)
Pyro did this for Coverse about about 8 years ago with the campaign, “Just Rubber and Blank Canvas”.